IT’S ALWAYS a vexing question: The Beatles or The Rolling Stones? Blur or Oasis? Nadine or Cheryl?
These two Girls Aloud members have just gone head-to-head in the solo career stakes, with Cheryl Cole (Mother Theresa for the Heatmagazine generation) roundly trouncing her erstwhile partner in the charts. Granted, La Cole had the X Factor marketing machine cranking away for her, and the freaks who watch that show will buy any rubbish put in front of them. But that alone can't account for the remarkable disparity in album sales between Cole and Nadine Coyle.
On paper, they're identikit starlets – you can move any of their songs from one album to the other and no one would notice the difference, such is the generic, bland r'n'b they've straight-jacketed themselves into. But in its first week of sales, Cole's Messy Little Raindropsalbum sold 105,000 copies and went to No 1 in the UK. Poor wee Nadine's Insatiable only sold 5,450 copies in the UK and went it with less than a bullet at No 47.
On looking at the production notes for Coyle’s album, you would have predicted the sales figures to be the other away round. It was recorded in London, Stockholm and LA, and the assembly line of songwriters and producers involved is stunning. Desmond Child has been responsible for singles that have sold more than 300 million copies; Mike Elizondo has written for Eminem, 50 Cent and Dr Dre; Steve Booker produced and co-wrote the multi-million selling Rockferry for Duffy; William Orbit has worked with Madonna and Blur; Guy Chambers has co-written most of Robbie Williams’s hits.
Throw in Tiesto, the guy from Matchbox Twenty, the guy who writes and produces Beyoncé, and the guy from No Doubt and you’re looking at an army of talent who surely only have to turn up in the studio to guarantee a mega-platinum best-seller.
There was also a massive promotional push behind Insatiable, with TV, print and poster campaigns everywhere you looked. The eponymous first single was even discounted to 35 cent to buy as a download, but in the UK it hobbled to No 26 before taking the express lift the other way out of the charts. In Ireland (where the Derry-born Coyle might have expected some home support) it struggled to No 20 – with Cheryl Cole sitting pretty at No 1.
As one supersized headline had it last week: “How do you like your humble pie, Nadine Coyle? It’s waiting for you when you’re ready. You just need to collect it. It’s in our fridge under the ‘Don’t Mess With Cheryl Cole’ cake.”
The reason Insatiable under- performed so dramatically is that radio wouldn’t touch it. In the dance-pop market, if you don’t get radio play you’re dead on arrival. The Insatiable single was played a grand total of once on BBC Radio 1; BBC Radio 2 didn’t spin it all. In contrast, radio was all over Cheryl Cole’s album.
Coyle was cold-shouldered by radio because she has an exclusive deal with Tesco to sell the album. Any radio play of the single was therefore free advertising for the supermarket giant. The same goes for TV coverage: there was no way Coyle was going to get an X Factor promo slot if Tesco would have to be given free mentions. And the whole thing may well have been in breach of broadcasting laws.
People, whether they are radio playlist programmers or casual fans, resent “exclusive” deals. The only acts who can get away with them are ones with a strong hardcore fan base who will hunt down the album regardless of where it’s stocked. But for someone launching a solo career, the priority should have been to make the debut album available everywhere.
You know what they say Nadine – every little helps.
